Gunfights, twitter and fring!

Andy Hadfield a local South African Blogger recently had an interesting experience when a gun fight broke out just meters from his bedroom window in a peaceful suburb in Johannesburg.

Andy recalls dropping to the floor and hiding under the bed with his wife as the gun fire rained outside, realizing that the bed was not the safest place to hide they then crawled to a safer location behind a solid wall, during this time Andy lost count as more than 40 shots where fired. The funniest thing is that during all this time Andy was doing something really cool while crawling around on the floor and hiding under bed? Would you believe it if we told you Andy was actually micro blogging the whole thing using fring’s twitter integration. If thats not cool, then what is?

fringsters read the full story of Andy and his wacky Gunfight, fring and twitter experience at this link.

Andy, this sure is the most interesting use of the fring Twitter combination we have ever heard of, thank you for sharing your story with the world Take care dude and “may the fring be with you”.

The Next Web Awards 2008- you decide who deserves the honors

fringsters, the time has come for you to decide who deserves the title Rookie of the Year for 2008. fring has been nominated in this category and we now need your vote. Rookie!? As the NWA website summarizes the essence of this unique award: “We know that there are tons of awards out there, but we try to change the rules and distinguish ourselves by NOT building up a database (we don’t want your info, so no registration needed), by NOT nominating every company out there, by NOT having 100 categories and by NOT considering all votes equal (you can empower your vote -1 vote counts for 2- if you vote in all categories).”

This award is a collaboration of The Next Web Blog, TechCrunch UK, TechCrunch France, Loogic, and Frankwatching; winners will be announced in Amsterdam, as part of The Next Web Conference.

No one else decides who wins this thing but You! fringsters, it’s time to cast your vote for your favorite mobile application out there.

Voting ends April 4th, 2008. Vote today ’cause it’s fringin’ freedom!

Is fring the missing link for mobile online storage services?

Fraser MacInnes is a writer for the mobile phone blog Pocket Picks and it’s sister mobile gaming site Pocket Gamer. This week he asks: Is fring the missing link for mobile online storage services?

Is fring the missing link for mobile online storage services?

Mobile VoIP is riding a comfortable wave of increased consumer understanding and industry acceptance right now after a dramatic burst into the industry last year. It’s not like 2007 was the year that it all began, but it was arguably the year that the big carriers started to take real notice.

I like to think that wherever there is progress, there is an industry wing in danger of being supplanted or at least coerced into dramatically shifting its priorities, it’s all part of the ebb and flow of the techie industry. It’s intriguing then that fresh from ruffling feathers among carriers last year, mobile VoIP technology might have a hand in shaking up a new market space in 2008.

Maybe I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, allow me to explain. The popularity of the iPhone and the subsequent N95 8GB revision are proof beyond reasonable doubt that there is a market for phones that can carry a considerable chunk of your data, be that music, videos or photos.

With mobile devices upping the ante in the connectivity stakes, and wifi/3G/HSDPA coverage becoming ever more ubiquitous, online storage solutions are looking like an increasingly attractive fit for an industry obsessed with miniaturizing its products.

Just last week I came across Jooce, a Luxemburg based venture offering unlimited online storage for a free sign-up. Perhaps even more pertinent is humyo, a free online storage service (though in this case limited to 30GB) that is already tuned to work with mobile phones.

But where on earth does mobile VoIP fit into all of this? Well, specifically in fring’s case, the implications of a handset that is essentially a portable limitless hard drive, along with free file transfer are pretty mind-boggling.

It could set a precedent for data sharing between mobiles that is scarcely enjoyed by PCs presently. Perhaps you are out and about and a friend sends you their latest holiday video to you via file transfer with fring. After you get over groaning at having being sent a bland badly shot memory intensive video of your friends sunning themselves in the Costa Del Sol, you decide that the polite thing to do would be to keep it.

The problem is, your handset’s memory is already at a stretch and though you have the space, it’s just not practical for you to clog up your memory card with such a large file. Uploading larger files like this to a service like humyo for downloading onto a PC or media player later would make a lot of sense in these situations and that’s just for starters.

The point, many might argue, of a portable device with large amounts of inbuilt storage is that you can have your data everywhere you go. That however might be somewhat shortsighted, surely the point of having your content hardwired to devices with such a focus on connectivity is so that you can share that content? There are of course all sorts of *boring* digital rights management issues to consider, but from where I am sitting, free mobile VoIP file transfer, like that offered by fring, could be the missing link in a chain that could see services like humyo and Jooce make big changes in how mobile data is stored and shared. Here’s hoping!

fring featured on nseries.com

Hey fringsters, fring has just been featured on one of the official Nokia sites. This is great news for everyone on the fring team, the late nights of blood, sweat and tears are paying off yippi

If you happen to be in the mood for a little channel hopping, why not pop over to Nokia’s Nseries site and see the feature for yourself, you could then even leave a comment and let Nokia know what you think of fring, your favorite mobile community.

ZAtech Show - techno podcast for all

fringsters ever so often we review an interesting new website or Blog. This week we bring you South Africa’s latest podcasting service simply called ZAtech Show. (ZATS)

Basically ZATS is a group of 5 high profile journalists getting together once a week to have their say about the state of the local information technology space.

The panel currently consists of Simon Dingle, Brett Haggard, Duncan McLeod, Benedict Kelly and Jon Tullett.

The show makes for interesting listening and delivers a full technology roundup. So guys if you are looking for a “talk show” with a techno twist give ZATS a try.

Toshiba Windows Mobile fringsters get an ear full of mVoIP naturally!

Another first from fring – great news for Toshiba Windows Mobile fans - we’ve just released the first ever Windows Mobile mVoIP application that enables you to use both the speakerphone and from today ALSO the ear piece as well for mVoIP calls.So put that phone next to your ear and…” when you have to talk, talk …. Don’t shout”

Until now, WM users had to use the speakerphone to make a VoIP call – a call for all the whole world to hear! the new fring version allows VoIP calling with the privacy and intimacy of a normal phone call!

Download the new version at www.fring.com (this upgraded version is available today for the Toshiba G500 & G900, G910 will be coming soon)

More new fring versions for Toshiba and other manufactures to arrive shortly.

The fring team

Revolutionizing internet communities

Services like facebook, flickr and YouTube are very popular among our peers and reports show that hundreds of millions of people use these services daily, even though virtual social networking services mix seamlessly with content sharing services there always seems to be something missing.

What is missing you may ask? Well I suppose that the answer is different for each one of us. To me though it is the ability to easily upload content on the run using my mobile handset.

Adding content on the go has always been difficult and time consuming, the ability to be on location at an event and upload content directly to my favorite social network or content sharing website has always lacked the easy factor. From what I hear though things are change dramatically in this regards. Enter CellSpin, founded in 2006 by Marcos Klein, CellSpin gives users the ability to upload content directly to any of their favorite online spots with the click of a button from their mobile device.

CellSpin currently supports an array of online services including YouTube, Picasa, Windows Live Spaces, flickr, Livejournal, facebook, ebay and Blogger.

fringsters, CellSpin is another unique mobile service that compliments your mobile experience and makes it so much more enjoyable.

If you haven’t already done so why not give CellSpin a try.

Thanks to our Spanish Blogger for bringing CellSpin to my attention.

25 best applications for your Nokia N95

Hey guys, ever wonder which mobile apps work best on your Nokia N95 handset? We recently came across a list of the 25 best applications for Nokia N95 handsets and thought we’d share the list with everyone, the fact that fring is on the top of the list makes it so much better to share

fring videos on YouTube

Hey guys

This post comes to you from a small cafe somewhere in Johannesburg. Been sitting here thinking what to blog about in the 15min I have before my next meeting and thought, hey why not take a look at videos that fringsters are making about fring. I started my search on YouTube.com and withing seconds I found the regular fring made videos, I then looked a little further down the list and found a few videos we don’t see so often made by fringsters around the world.

This post is dedicated to all the fringsters out there who are documenting and translating their fring experience so others can learn how to use fring in their home language. To everyone out there making fring videos, guys we salute you.

Please note the videos playing today are not English.

fringsters if you are reading this post and have a great video about fring and would like us to post it on the fring Blog, please email us the link and we will be happy to share it with the rest of the fring family and the world.

2 Trillion SMS’s in 2008

To many of us SMS’s died after the invention of amazing mobile IM applications. The opposite however is actually true.

According to a recent report more than 2 Trillion (2 000 000 000 000) SMS’s will be sent globally this year with an estimated $65-75 billion in revenue foreseen from this market.

Although numbers are extremely high, revenue is actually seen dropping because of market saturation and healthy competition. The Asia-Pacific region currently accounts for most of the new traffic.

Its going to be interesting watching this space in the next few years, with costly SMS messages reaching 2 Trillion in 2008. I can only imaging what (almost free) Instant Messaging numbers will be during the same period.

Only time will tell what the future will bring, for the moment thought the good news for many SMS fans is that the SMS market is very much alive and well and getting vastly cheaper daily.